Against World Literature

✍ Scribed by Apter, Emily

• Book ID: 108873552
• Publisher: Verso Books
• Tongue: en-US
• Weight: 5 MB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781844679706

✦ Synopsis

Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability argues for a rethinking of comparative literature focusing on the problems that emerge when large-scale paradigms of literary studies ignore the politics of the “Untranslatable”--the realm of those words that are continually retranslated, mistranslated, transferred from language to language, or especially resistant to substitution.

In the place of “World Literature”--a dominant paradigm in the humanities, one grounded in market-driven notions of readability and universal appeal--Apter proposes a plurality of “world literatures” oriented around philosophical concepts and geopolitical pressure points. The history and theory of the language that constructs World Literature is critically examined with a special focus on Weltliteratur , literary world systems, narrative ecosystems, language borders and checkpoints, theologies of translation, and...